Exploring the diversity of plant DNA viruses and their satellites using vector-enabled metagenomics on whiteflies.

ABSTRACT: Current knowledge of plant virus diversity is biased towards agents of visible and economically important diseases. Less is known about viruses that have not caused major diseases in crops, or viruses from native vegetation, which are a reservoir of biodiversity that can contribute to viral emergence. Discovery of these plant viruses is hindered by the traditional approach of sampling individual symptomatic plants. Since many damaging plant viruses are transmitted by insect vectors, we have developed "vector-enabled metagenomics" (VEM) to investigate the diversity of plant viruses. VEM involves sampling of insect vectors (in this case, whiteflies) from plants, followed by purification of viral particles and metagenomic sequencing. The VEM approach exploits the natural ability of highly mob

SUBMITTER: Ng TF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3081322 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature